We can take full outsourced responsibility to reduce your in-house
workload. Alternatively we work alongside your premises or facilities
team as a flexible resource, responding to varying needs for our
specialist skills. Our background in FM, CRE, investment, finance
and accounting leaves us uniquely qualified to act as the interface
between Board strategy and property operations.

In an ideal world, property tactics would merely respond to Corporate
Strategy, but in practice property rarely provides appropriate
flexibility. Furthermore, flexibility comes at a price, so the level of
flexibility in your occupational portfolio should be optimized to
minimize the overall cost. Property therefore needs to inform Corporate
Strategy, as well as respond to it.

We build a ‘benchmark’ current financial model, then develop and test
various scenarios against it. Outputs cover the optimum scenario
including related financial implications; required activity list and
programme; and considerations of alternative tenures (including
regearing existing leases, full and partial outsourcing, sales and
leasebacks, pre-lets etc).

New leases and purchases are sometimes driven by urgent operating
requirements – but they must also fit the wider corporate strategy and
avoid financial pitfalls.

Our services include portfolio planning, strategic and tactical
advice, search, selection, negotiation and project management for new
operational requirements, coupled with FRS12/IAS37 exit strategies for
potential legacy properties. We can also source external funding where
freehold acquisition is identified as the best option.

Hidden liabilities, including guarantees and ultimate responsibility
for assigned leases, can lurk unnoticed on the books of potential target
companies. Rationalising two companies’ merged portfolios brings an
additional set of issues.

REAL offers a due diligence service to identify operational property
risks and the financial implications of existing and potential 'Legacy
Leaseholds' prior to completion. We are accustomed to working
discreetly to assist your senior executives devise and implement
property strategy, often in an environment sensitized by considerations
such as employment, competition, stock exchange disclosure and speed.

Overcharging can arise through mistake or by a liberal interpretation
of the lease clauses, especially as lease expiries approach. Changes in
managing agents or landlords, and reconciliations at the expiry of a
lease require particularly careful analysis.

Our service in this area has therefore been devised to produce
supplementary certificates for internal governance purposes, confirming
that expenditure has been properly billed. In the process we search for
savings, with the majority of our remuneration on a performance-related
basis linked to refunds and savings.

We have achieved savings backdated several years translating into
significant refunds. Often the savings are repeated in subsequent years
and in some cases can even imply a lasting reduction each year until the
expiry of the lease.

We can take responsibility for all your property accounting, to
minimize your administrative burden, maximize recovery from subtenants,
streamline the production of corporate and management accounts and
budgets, and achieve refunds and ongoing cost savings.

We will handle your property bought ledger and all subtenant
accounting. You can reduce your admin to one bill and one remittance
from us per quarter.

Integral to this arrangement, we will seek refunds and savings and
look for scope to run service charges more efficiently.

Company accounts have to reflect the capitalized costs of surplus
properties. Whilst FRS12/IAS37 is a technical reporting issue, it
reflects real cash impacts on your business. Our aim while dealing with
the technical review is to deliver meaningful reductions in the current
and potential costs of surplus operational property.

Outputs include estimates of the potential total liability; the
decline in these liabilities over time, due to the expiry of headleases;
means by which growth in liabilities can be controlled, and could be
reduced; steps to minimize your ongoing management burden; and strategy
options. A vital consideration is the likely impact on your accounts of
provisions arising from a decision to vacate certain properties at a
given future date.

Our Legacy Estate service provides corporate clients with a new
method to control, reduce and sometimes exit from FRS12/IAS37
liabilities for surplus operational properties.

Assignments and sublettings of surplus operational properties (or
‘Legacy Estates’) are challenging as they require the simultaneous
agreement of the landlord, yourselves and the prospective occupant. The
financial and legal complexities of these transactions, and surrenders,
add to the difficulties faced by traditional agents handling this type
of work.

Our Legacy service supplements traditional agency activity by drawing
on our skills and lateral thinking in the fields of property investment,
CRE and accounting to bring about a positive shift in the disposal
dynamics. We review, supervise and drive forward the marketing
campaign, where necessary taking over negotiations from the agent, and
project-managing the transaction through legal stages to completion.